NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares advanced 3.66% on Wednesday after a report said Chinese authorities are preparing to allow a select group of the country’s leading artificial intelligence companies to purchase a limited number of the company’s H200 AI chips, signaling a possible shift in Beijing’s approach to advanced AI hardware.
According to The Information, officials have recently notified Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek that they are expected to receive approval to acquire H200 chips. The final quota has not yet been decided, but the total allocation is expected to remain below 200,000 units, far short of the demand those companies submitted earlier this year.
If implemented, the decision would represent a reversal of China’s previous stance. Although Washington has already cleared Nvidia to sell H200 chips to China and issued licenses to roughly 10 Chinese companies, Beijing has delayed granting domestic approvals while encouraging the adoption and development of homegrown semiconductor technologies.
The reported policy shift comes as Chinese AI developers face mounting pressure due to limited access to advanced computing resources, increasing the urgency for additional high-performance chips to support expanding AI workloads.
The development also follows earlier indications that Nvidia was making progress in the Chinese market. Reuters reported in March that the company had obtained Beijing’s approval to market the H200 chips, while Chief Executive Jensen Huang later said Nvidia had received the necessary clearance from Chinese authorities.
More recently, Reuters reported that Nvidia told customers in China its next-generation Vera AI data center processors could become available as early as August, with orders expected to begin before shipments.
China has become an increasingly challenging market for Nvidia. Huang previously said the company’s share of the Chinese market had effectively disappeared, reflecting the combined impact of U.S. export restrictions and Beijing’s efforts to strengthen its domestic semiconductor industry.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares are trading at $204.14, up 27.57% over the past year.
